The Pied Piper's Daughter

I awoke with the sun in my eyes, knowing I’d dreamt a truth dream.  I had so many questions to ask my father and rolled over to shake him awake.

He was gone.

‘Father?’

I sat up and noticed that all his things had vanished too.  If he’d merely went to relieve himself, to scout ahead or forage for food, he wouldn’t have taken his pack with him.  Father had never left me behind before.  Not once.  Sometimes when he’d take a job in town, if he thought it was too dangerous, I’d wait for him at our campsite beyond the outskirts of town.  But that was different – I always knew where he was.  This time he’d left without a word.  Left, or been taken. 

That thought made my heart leap and I jumped up to scour the edges of our campsite, soon picking up his trail.  It didn’t look like there’d been any kind of struggle, nor were there signs of a second person.  Father had simply departed.  Why had he left without me?

From a work in progress, The Pied Piper's Daughter. 

The original draft won a high commendation at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre Speculative Fiction Awards last year.